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Topic: François Ozon (Read 4367 times)

Hmm. No thread on this guy. So odd. He already has one for Swimming Pool, sure, but that's beside the point. Anyone seen anything else of his?

I just saw 8 Femmes tonight, so I had to comment. Unlike Swimming Pool, 8 Femmes was great, campy fun. Ludivine Sagnier looked so young. Cast was great, film was hilarious, and the musical element, while clunky at first, actually worked in the end. A lot of people didn't know what to make of it, but after about 20 minutes, I was digging it all. Oh yes, and Virginie Ledoyen is gorgeous. The end. ***½ (8/10)

I think Ozon's a good screenwriter and creates great parts for his actors (mostly women). He's not that amazing a director. He's simple and right to the point. I think he will make some great films and some regular ones. I just hope he keeps on using Charlotte Rampling in his movies, because she kicks some fucking ass (also, Ludivine Sagnier is damn hot in Swimming Pool and gives an amazing performance and when you can make an actress be hot and do a great job in the same movie, then you must be talented )

ThinkFilm has acquired all U.S. rights to "5x2," the latest film from director "Swimming Pool" director Francois Ozon.

The movie focuses on five key chapters in a couple's life together, from the first blush of sexual attraction to their wedding night and the birth of their first child. The story is told in reverse chronology.

"5x2" stars Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Stephane Freiss. Its world premiere was at the Venice International Film Festival and its North American bow at the Toronto fest. ThinkFilm will open the film Stateside in the spring, according to Mark Urman, head of the company's U.S. theatrical division.

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

Francois Ozon directed 2003’s acclaimed hit Swimming Pool. His latest film is 5x2 it is about a young couple Gilles and Marion in their 30's, filmed in five crucial parts of their life. The backwards timeline shows how their marriage fell apart, and creates nostalgia as we discover the happiness of the early days.

Daniel Robert Epstein: What made you decide to do this kind of unique movie and give it a title that kind of says that its an experiment?

Francois Ozon: It is an experiment. I wanted to try to tell a very centered story that would give a kind of distance on this type of story to give you the opportunity to think about your own life and your own experience with couples. I don’t have the answer about how to succeed as a couple, I just have questions. I thought that the best way to tell the story would be to put all these questions in the film. But you’ll have to find the answers yourself.

DRE: What was more interesting to film, the happy scenes or the sad scenes?

FO: It was not difficult to do the dramatic scenes because I like to work with actors who have fun and I don’t want them to suffer. So it’s just a game we are playing. Doing the sex scenes for example goes very fast, the actors usually don’t like doing them so they are good on the first shot.

DRE: What made you decide to have an American come in and cause a little trouble on the wedding day?

FO: I wanted an American man because I wanted someone who is just there for a night. We know they won’t have a real relationship together, just sex for a night. I think it’s better to have a sex night with an American.

DRE: Did you shoot the film in order?

FO: No, the chronology was done in the reverse. The challenge of the film was to start with the end of the story and try to find during the shooting what was the beginning of the story.

DRE: Was this relationship was just doomed from the start?

FO: No, I think they are really in love. I think if you believe in the story that there is a kind of small miracle between them. The problem of the relationship is that it started with the man is stuck in a relationship with a woman and so he repeats the same kind of relationship with his new woman, Marion.

DRE: Is the film autobiographical at all?

FO: No, it’s not autobiographical because I have never been involved and I don’t have a child. I think there are many feelings I know and I try to be very personal but it’s not very autobiographical.

DRE: How easy is it for you to direct sex scenes?

FO: I love that. It’s very exciting. I think that its very important to have sex scenes because when the actors are naked, they don’t play anymore. They are only themselves and you can see their bodies. In the film it is very important to see the evolution of the body because the film takes place during five years and you can see the body in the hotel after the divorce of Marion and Gilles is not the same at the end of the film when they met on the beach.

DRE: Is the film pessimistic about relationships?

FO: No, it’s not pessimistic it’s just risky. I think you have to know when you begin love it won’t be endless. It will stop one day, it will end and I think it’s better to know that at the beginning so you have more pleasure when you have it. It’s just realist.

DRE: How was it writing with your writing partner Emmanuèle Bernheim?

FO: She helped me for the second part of the film with the wedding night and for the meeting on the beach. She didn’t write, we just talked script.

DRE: Does that give you a better perspective on women?

FO: She helped me to find exactly what I want to tell. She helped me for the female character and I ask her many things. It’s a lot of discussion that helped me write the script.

DRE: Would people understand what the title means if you didn’t tell them in the trailer or something like that?

FO: Yes, I think so because the situations are very simple. Everyone can identify with the birth of a baby and the wedding night, it’s very common situation I think.

DRE: But how would people know what five times two means unless they‘re told?

FO: It’s not important to know that. I like to see mysterious titles.

DRE: What did you think of Marina de Van’s film In My Skin?

FO: I loved it. I thought it was very good film, very deep and very close to her and I was very touched by the film.

DRE: Did she talk with you about it at all?

FO: No, I just saw the editing of the film.

DRE: Will you be working with her again?

FO: I hope so. She has a new project.

DRE: What are you working on now?

FO: I have just finished a new film called Le Temps Qui Reste which was presented in Cannes and I think it will be released next year in America.

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

[FO: I have just finished a new film called Le Temps Qui Reste which was presented in Cannes and I think it will be released next year in America.

...I just saw this. It's very much in the same vein as 5x2, but just thiiiiis short of being quite as good.... I found some tiny flaws of sentimentality, but I'd be willing to see it again to double-check my response, and overall it avoids that kind of thing. Plus, it has Jeanne Moreau, still feisty at [whatever age she is]. Moreau must be a friend of the gays.... first she was in Fassbinder's Querelle, and now this..... It also has Valerie Bruno-Tedeschi (sp?) from 5x2 and, I'm sure someone probably noticed, Munich.

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""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

I can never say a bad thing about Godardian. The difference of our tastes aside, leave it to him to give a special mention to Jeanne Moreau. I've noticed she gets less attention on this board every year. I see more new faces than ever but its a cardinal sin to forget the only actor who is synonymous with the French New Wave and French Cinema after the 1960s. Add on to the fact of how representative she was for other major directors like Bunuel, Welles and Antonioni.

As for her relation to the gays, she has an interesting history. In the early 1960s, she met the openly gay fashion designer Pierre Cardin. She knew he was gay but tried to court him anyways. She made no attempt to alter the allegations that this was an ego rub as well as an attraction. She wanted to conquer the love of a gay man. Well, she did. They were together for a few years to incredible media coverage. Cardin got his muse and celebrity while Moreau cemented a personality as risque off screen as on.

I have little comment on it, but there is something to say to making a game out of sexuality the way she did.

Not all foreign auteurs aspire to conquer Hollywood. Take Francois Ozon. After scoring an international hit with his 2003 English-language thriller "Swimming Pool," the French writer-director ignored the siren call of the major studios.

Instead, the "8 Women" helmer returned to his Gallic roots for his next two films, including the 2005 Cannes selection "Time to Leave" (Le temps qui reste), which Strand Releasing opens Friday in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"I have a French point of view, and I don't want to work with a studio. I want to have my freedom to do exactly what I want," says Ozon, who turned down many U.S. offers in the wake of "Swimming Pool's" critical success. "I want to have final cut. It's difficult to find money in America if you want to be totally free."

Many foreign directors -- from Alfonso Cuaron ("Y Tu Mama Tambien," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban") to "Amelie's" Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who is set to helm Fox 2000's "Life of Pi" -- move back and forth between native projects and studio fare. By contrast, Ozon insists he's not interested in making the artistic compromises necessary for the box office-driven U.S. film industry.

"I think when you go to America, very often you lose your soul because you have to work in the American way, which is so different from the European way of making movies," he says, adding that the transition is especially difficult for directors who write their own scripts. "When you have the freedom to do exactly what you want, why would you move to America to be totally controlled and to have to work with people that maybe you don't respect and who are difficult to work with?"

Ozon, who writes all of his film's screenplays, points to the career of Pedro Almodovar as a stellar example of eschewing Tinseltown's trappings in favor of riskier, less MPAA-friendly stories. "He's had so many propositions," he says. "But he's still in Europe. And he still makes beautiful movies."

Like Almodovar, Ozon is able to explore story lines and themes not likely to earn a green light from profit-minded studio executives. For example, "Time to Leave" chronicles the final days of a young hedonistic gay man facing a fatal illness -- it's complete with graphic sex scenes and devoid of any sentimentality. Even if an A-list star on the level of a Tom Hanks were interested in performing in such a film, it would make most decision-makers balk.

And though Ozon prefers to remain in Europe, particularly France, he isn't opposed to making English-language films again. He recently wrapped the U.K.-set Romola Garai starrer "Angel," about the rise and fall of a young eccentric British writer in the early 20th century.

"I don't want to make English or French films exclusively. I just follow my instincts," says the Paris native, who speaks flawless English, albeit with a thick accent. "'Swimming Pool' was in English because the character played by Charlotte Rampling was a British writer. And she actually spoke French and English in the film. Each time it depends on the story."

In fact, the thirtysomething director says he is anything but set in his ways. For "Time to Leave," he created a male protagonist -- a departure from his usual female-driven narratives.

"It was a real experimentation because I'm more used to doing films with women," he says. "It's easier for me to work with actresses."

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

Teodora boards Ozon's 'Ricky'Film is about child with special powersSource: Variety

Italy’s Teodora Film has boarded Gallic helmer Francois Ozon’s “Ricky,” about a child with supernatural powers, which is set to start shooting in Paris this month.

Teodora, the arthouse shingle headed by Vieri Razzini that released Ozon’s last pic “Angel,” is co-producing “Ricky” having taken a 10% stake in the pic from Le Pact, the production and sales boutique set up recently by former Bac Film topper Jean Labadie.

Sergi Lopez (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) and Alexandra Lamy (“Brice de Nice”) will play the ordinary parents of the extraordinary child in this genre-fusing film, which Ozon has said will mix thriller, horror, sci-fi, comedy and fairy tale elements.

“Ricky” is being produced by Chris Bolzi’s Eurowide Film Production in association with Paris and Los Angeles-based effects house BUF, whose recent credits include “Asterix at the Olympic Games” and “Spider-Man 3.”

Shoot is set to start Feb. 25.

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol